Inspiration, ideas and information to help women build public speaking content, confidence and credibility. Denise Graveline is a Washington, DC-based speaker coach who has coached nearly 200 TEDMED and TEDx speakers--including one of 2016's most popular TED talks. She also has prepared speakers for presentations, testimony, and keynotes. She offers 1:1 coaching and group workshops in public speaking, presentation and media interview skills to both men and women.

Wednesday, May 29, 2013

I get a lot of mail here at The Eloquent Woman, but perhaps no missive so unusual as a request that came in some time ago from a speaker coach seeking help: She'd just been asked to help a dear friend who was dying of cancer to prepare a speech about her life and illness. In addition to becoming an activity that engaged readers of this blog, it gave me a new perspective on something I've seen many times in my communications career: The process of asking grateful cancer patients to become public speakers on behalf of research and care fundraising for the disease that may eventually represent the end of their stories.

In this case, the patient was extra fortunate: She had a good friend who coaches speakers. While we withheld names to protect their privacy, now it can be told that the speaker coach was Claire Duffy of Australia, and her friend was physician Helen Pedersen, who died May 21. In that first email, Claire shared her professional and personal dilemma and asked me to ask you for help:

I've done tough things before, and if she weren't my friend I could laugh. Black humour, irreverence...they are all tools to help make an unbearable subject bearable. But my sadness and our attachment are blocking my ability to think clearly about how to help her prepare - let alone write the script

Helen dreaded public speaking. It wasn’t an easy job for either of us.

Her first draft opened with excuses about the unseemliness of drawing attention to herself. She blamed her Presbyterian missionary grandparents. I blamed her. Self-promotion was not among her many gifts. But at the end of our second run through, on stage in an empty hall, she straightened up, tidied her notes, and said “I can do this." And she could.

Claire wrote last week to share news of Helen's death and to send a message to my readers. Here it is:

It's been over two years since I asked for The Eloquent Woman's help on a speech by my terminally ill friend, Helen. Preparing that first speech was hard for each of us, but it set us up wonderfully, me for two more years of friendship, her for a new 'career' speaking about cancer. I am so grateful to you and your readers for your assistance, support and kindness, we couldn't have done it without you. Thank you.

One reason I'm glad that Claire reached out to us for help is that the resulting collection of advice and speeches--as well as Helen's speech--might help someone else in the same position. Let's do this to honor Helen, and her coach friend Claire: If you work with a volunteer group, fundraising office, university cancer lab, medical institution or other organization involved in cancer research or patient care, please do share these posts with the organization, so they can be shared with other patients who are challenged to speak in public at a similar difficult time. We ask much of these articulate and grateful patients when we ask them to speak in public. Let's share some of the wonderful support generated by Helen's efforts as a speaker at the end of her story with those who are just beginning to tell theirs.